Victoria
Victoria is the eleventh episode of the first season of Human Target. Synopsis Chance is conscripted to protect a very prominent member of the British royal family, or possibly conned into it, one whose decision to get a princely divorce and declare her love for a commoner has her marked for assassination by her corrupt Royalty Protection bodyguards. Forced to take on the Royal Family's "Cleaner", Chance and the princess have to seek help from an ex-IRA guerrilla – who has previously placed two bounties on Victoria's head - since there's no one else those with royal influence can't reach and turn. Case file **Awaiting after-action report** Guest stars * Christina Cole as Princess Victoria * Erick Avari as Gerard * Rey Valentin as Tony Sorrento * Kavan Smith as Nathan * Christopher Heyerdahl as Connor Dunham * Josh Blacker as Nigel * Sean Carey as James * Jason Diablo as Francis/Barfly * Patricia Drake as Her Majesty the Queen * Mackenzie Gray as Templeton * Singh Gruven as Cab Driver * Marcus Hondro as Shopkeeper * Robert Lawrenson as Prince Walter * Chris Moon as Curious Paparazzo Statements and hearsay Memorable quotes from the case. **Awaiting after-action report** Music Chance's dramatic entrance by helicopter to meet with the limo that will take him Victoria's hotel is meant to evoke a Western theme filled with staccato horns and charging trumpets. McCreary says, "For the orchestration, I borrowed liberally from Elmer Bernstein and arranged it as if it were a classic western, like The Magnificent Seven or The Comancheros. Chance is riding in on a helicopter, but if the music has any say in the matter, he might as well ride into town on horseback, coming off the dusty trail." As Templeton's (and subsequently Victoria's husband's) involvement in the plot to kill the princess is revealed to the Queen, McCreary pays homage to the theme for the wolf in Prokofiev's classic Peter and the Wolf. Background * The world of the show separates itself from our own by explicitly defining a dramatically different British royal family. ** Here, the Queen is significantly younger in age than her real-life counterpart, Queen Elizabeth II. ** Elizabeth does not have any children named Victoria, though her great-great grandmother was Queen Victoria. ** Victoria is Princess of Wales and heir apparent to the throne, an indirect analog to Charles, Prince of Wales. ** Now, and at the time of the series, there is no current Princess of Wales. The last person to carry the title was the late Princess Diana. Prince Charles' second wife, Camilla, chose the title Duchess of Cornwall out of respect for Diana. * Victoria is prepared to abdicate her position in the royal line of succession to divorce her husband and be with Tony. The last real-world abdication was by Elizabeth's uncle, King Edward VIII, in 1936. Elizabeth's father was crowned king, and she assumed the throne upon his death in 1952. Edward VIII gave up his crown for a similar reason to the show's Victoria: He was in love with and wanted to marry American socialite Wallis Simpson, who was in the process of divorcing her second husband. * The verse on Katherine Walters' gravestone is from the same passage in Psalms that Chance recites to the gathered monks in "Sanctuary". References